A NEW prostate cancer breakthrough could see patients cured in just a week, researchers have found.
Radiotherapy advancements could make it possible to treat patients in just days.
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Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in British blokes, and the third deadliest in the UK.
One in eight men in the UK will develop prostate cancer during their lifetime.
Radiotherapy for prostate cancer can be given in 20 sessions each week for a duration of one month.
The Royal Marsden doctors will be leading a clinical trial that will determine if the number of sessions can be reduced to only two.
This would allow radiotherapy to be more focused on the tumour.
Dr Alison Tree, a consultant clinical oncologist at The Royal Marsden and the Institute of Cancer Research London suggested that men could “come in and get treated” and then live a cancer-free life.
“15 years ago, we did very basic radiotherapy. You treated large, square areas of your body.
“Of course, cancer is never square — and that meant you would [irradiate] a lot of healthy tissue accidentally, because that was the best we could do.
“We are so much more precise that we don’t hit much of the healthy tissue now”, she told The Times.
Another team of experts has developed a new combination of drugs to combat the disease.
FRESH HOPE
Experts have said that the ‘triple treatment’ should be offered to patients with the most aggressive cancers.
Two trials have supported these findings. One showed that three drugs could prolong life by giving men with metastatic high-burden prostate cancer 2.5 years longer without causing cancer progression and an additional 18 months.
The Peace-1 trial found that using abiraterone acetate and prednisolone (AAP) alongside two other drugs – ADT and docetaxel – patients had an additional 25 per cent reduction in the risk of death compared to those using just the two drugs.
Professor in Oncology at the University of Paris-Saclay and author of the study, Karim Fizazi said additional side-effects from this combination were “mostly mild, with very few severe side-effects”.
He said that these men now have a chance to live for more than five, which is a significant improvement on the median survival of three years before 2015.
“By 2022, all three treatments will be generic drugs which should improve access for patients worldwide.”
KNOW THE SIGNS: The symtoms of prostate cancer you should look out for
In most cases, prostate cancer doesn’t have any symptoms until the growth is big enough to put pressure on the urethra – that tube you pee through.
Symptoms include:
- Needing to urinate more often, especially at night
- Needing to rush to the toilet
- Difficulty in starting to pee
- Weak flow
- Straining and taking a long time while peeing
- Feeling that your bladder hasn’t emptied fully
Many men’s prostates get larger as they age because of the non-cancerous conditions, prostate enlargement and benign prostatic hyperplasia.
Although these conditions are more common that prostate cancer, they should not be overlooked.
The symptoms of cancer are bone, back, or testicular pains, unexplained weight loss, and loss of appetite.
Dr Matthew Hobbs, director of research at Prostate Cancer UK said the study shows that combining the drugs could give men up to ‘18 months of additional life’.
“This will make a huge difference for these men, and if the full results confirm these findings, we want to see this combination approved on the NHS as quickly as possible”, he said.
The Stampede trial was the second, and focused on high-risk cases of prostate cancer.
The Stampede trial found that men who received both standard and AAP treatment for two years showed an increase in metastasis-free survival rates from 69% to 82% at six years.
In addition to an increase in overall survival, they also saw an improvement of prostate cancer specific survival rates from 85% up to 93%.
The results were presented at ESMO Congress 2021.
Dr. Hobbs stated: “These new exciting results show that giving Abiraterone to men suffering from aggressive localised prostate carcinoma can prevent this from ever happening. It reduces their risk of dying from prostate cancer by more than half at six years.”
“We hope that abiraterone is made available on NHS for this group and look forward seeing more research from this amazing study.
“That’s why Prostate Cancer UK is providing £2.5 million in funding to help the researchers target prostate cancer treatments to work out which men will benefit most.”
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